Liberal vs. Conservative

These are words I've had to stop using. I used to be in "conservative" circles, and everyone around me knew what we meant by "liberal." But now I'm in "liberal" circles, and their idea of "conservative" is just as different from my previous experience of it as my previous ideas about "liberal" were from my current experience. Can you tell I didn't get much sleep last night?

Anyway, I think they are unhelpful terms because they are usually used either derogatorily (when using the term you think you're not), or defensively (to circle the wagons around the term you think you are). Also, they don't mean the same things to the same people.

All that being said... I still find myself dealing with a little bit of culture shock in my current surroundings, and I'm trying to sort through what is a holdover from my old prejudices about "liberal" churches and what is really not okay. Let me give you some history so you know where I'm coming from.

My mom became a Christian in college, in a straight-up conversion, led through the Bible, prayed the sinner's prayer, turned from old sins, etc. She found a national, evangelical, para-church Bible Study that you may have heard of, grew leaps and bounds, and by the time I was born a few years later, she was ready to bring me up right. I accepted Jesus into my heart at age two (according to my mom, I don't remember), and proceeded to reaccept Jesus several times throughout my childhood, usually prompted by watching Billy Graham crusades on tv. Throughout this time, we moved a lot and attended Methodist, Episcopal, Presbyterian, Christian Missionary Alliance, and non-denominational churches. What was being preached was more important than which denomination's name was outside on the welcome sign. But I considered myself to be a "conservative" girl. (I'm talking theology here, people, not gun control and taxes).

Anyway, I made my faith my own in high school through Young Life camp, attended a "conservative" evangelical college which you will certainly have heard of if you know anything about these sorts of things, and married an evangelical boy. We became members of a church which happened to belong to one of the denominations mentioned above, boy felt the call to become a pastor, and we set off for seminary.

That's where things started to get blurry. Some folks would call this seminary "liberal" - but some wouldn't. I met people from churches I would previously have branded as "liberal" (or I would even at the time have said "dead") who seemed to genuinely love Jesus. I absorbed - through my husband's classes - some nuanced understandings of historical readings of Scripture and started to question some of the things I'd previously held. A lot of the time, though, I held on to the things I'd previously believed (and still do) despite what my husband was being taught. Obviously I'm glossing over a lot of this for the sake of time.

Fast forward to graduation from seminary - one baby at home, one on the way. Must find a job soon or move in with in-laws. My husband interviewed with several, mostly "liberal" churches in our denomination. Some were rejected by us for being too "liberal." Finally, we felt called to this one.

We've been here for a year and I'm now chucking the labels out the window. I just want to understand this church and these people and what God wants for them and for us. We don't think we'll be here long - there are many things that we've discovered just seem to be outside our comfort zone. Our denomination has many churches in it across a wide theological spectrum. Within a year or two, we'll probably start looking for a church to serve that fits us a little better.

But... God is obviously at work here. It just looks different than I'm used to. Is what makes me uncomfortable the fact that people haven't been taught to pray out loud, or study their Bible every day, or is it that they haven't prayed the sinner's prayer, or they feel differently than I do about hot-button issues? What does God want to change here - and what is okay?

Right now I'm settling on John 17:23 as a definition of what the church is supposed to look like. "May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." Are we letting the world know that God sent Jesus and that God loves the world? Maybe the rest is just so much semantics.

Baby #2 is awake now and so those are my thoughts for the day.